The music itself is clearly an elaboration and development of a series of short movements composed by Robert Johnson for Middleton's play of _The Witch_.[15]
It must not be forgotten that many of Purcell's anthems now in use in our cathedrals were the product of his youthful pen and genius whilst he was still a pupil of Cooke. Captain Cooke, the soldier musician, died, as previously stated, in 1672, and was succeeded in his appointment as "Master of the Children of the Chapel" by one whose nature, genius, and scientific knowledge of music must have stimulated and excited in a special manner the dawning powers of the youthful musical company committed to his charge, and the force of whose example must have proved of the greatest service to Purcell. This man was Pelham Humphreys;[16] he had been educated in the Chapel Royal under Captain Cooke, where his abilities and his personal attractions made a strong impression on Charles II. In Nov., 1663, Pepys made the following entry in his Diary: "The anthem was good after sermon, being the fifty-first psalme, made for five voices, by one of Captain Cooke's boys--a pretty boy. And they say there are four or five of them that can do as much. And here I first perceived that the king is musicall, and kept good time with his hand all along the anthem."
The _pretty boy_ was undoubtedly Pelham Humphreys. Clifford's book of anthems, published in 1664, the year after the incident just recorded, contains the words of five anthems, "composed by Pelham Humphrey, one of the Children of His Majesties Chappel;" and in Boyce's _Cathedral Music_ we find Humphreys' anthem, "Have mercy upon me," the words of which are taken from the fifty-first psalm. There can be little doubt, therefore, that this was the very anthem heard and approved by Pepys.
In 1664 the king sent Humphreys to Paris,[17] to study under Lully; and he also probably went to Italy. During his absence the king gave him an appointment as one of the Gentlemen of the Chapel Royal; and on his return to London in October, 1667, he was "sworn in" to the place. He speedily produced several new compositions, sacred and secular, by command of the king.
Pepys' entry in his Diary for November 15, 1667, is very quaint. He says, "Home, and there find, as I expected, Mr. Cæsar and little Pelham Humphreys, lately returned from France, and is an absolute Monsieur, as full of form and confidence and vanity, and disparages everything and everybody's skill but his own. But to hear how he laughs at all the king's musick here, at Blagrave and others, that they cannot keep time or tune, nor understand anything: and at Grebus,[18] the Frenchman, the king's master of musick, how he understands nothing, nor can play on any instrument, and so cannot compose: and that he will give him a lift out of his place, and that he and the king are mighty great." On the following day, the 16th, Pepys notes that there was a performance of Pelham Humphreys' musick given before the king at Whitehall.